Hail Mary! Statue’s trip down the Wye raises chicken pollution issue

Artist Philip Chatfield hopes river journey will alert people to damage being done by poultry excrement

It was not the most elegant start to the day. The sculpture was trundled down to the Herefordshire riverbank on a sack truck borrowed from a builder before being bolted and strapped to a makeshift catamaran constructed out of two canoes.

But after that, it was much more graceful and serene as the peculiar vessel was pushed off into the current, and craft and carving, Our Lady of the Waters and the Wye, began to meander downstream.